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The Challenges of Islamic Feminism1 Ziba Mir-Hosseini

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The Challenges of Islamic Feminism1 Ziba Mir-Hosseini ESEJ / ESSAY GENDER AND RESEARCH The Challenges of Islamic Feminism1 Ziba Mir-Hosseini Abstract: By the early 1990s there were clear signs of the emergence of a new gender discourse that came to be labelled ‘Islamic feminism’. In this paper, I fi rst set this new discourse against the backdrop of the global and local politics of Islam and gender in the latter part of the 20th century. Then I introduce the work of feminist scholar-activists who argue for equality and justice from inside the Muslim tradition, outline how they seek to change the terms of traditional Islamic discourses on gender, and consider their prospects of success. I shall focus on Musawah (www.musawah.org), a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. Keywords: Islam, Islamic feminism, family law, Musawah Mir-Hosseini, Ziba. 2019. ‘The Challenges of Islamic Feminism.’ Gender a výzkum / Gen- der and Research, Vol. 20, No. 2: 108–122, http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/25706578.2019. 20.2.486. The Muslim legal tradition does not treat men and women equally. At the heart of its unequal construction of gender rights lie two key assumptions: one theological – that God has given men authority over women; the other sociological, refl ecting an ancient premise – men are strong, they protect and provide, while women are weak and obey. These assumptions are reproduced in a set of legal rulings that the classical Muslim jurists derived from Islam’s sacred texts. They continue to constitute the established interpretations of the Shari‘a. With the expansion of human rights and feminist discourses in the course of the twentieth century, many Muslims came to see these interpretations as unjust and discriminatory and began to challenge them from within. By the late 1980s this challenge had acquired the label of ‘Islamic feminism’, which at the time seemed a contradiction in terms. There has since been much discussion and debate and a growing literature on this composite term, to which I have contributed (Mir-Hosseini 1995, 2006, 2011a). 1 This article draws on and expands arguments I presented in two previous articles (Mir-Hosseini 2014, 2016). | 108 | Ročník 20 • číslo 2 / 2019 I have two aims in this article. First, to set the rise of ‘Islamic feminism’ against the backdrop of the global and local politics of Islam and gender in the latter part of the twentieth century. Second, to provide an idea of the work of the feminist scholar- activists who argue for equality and justice from inside the Muslim tradition and of how they seek to change the terms of traditional Islamic discourses on gender and to consider their prospects of success. I shall refer to Musawah (www.musawah. org), a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. Musawah – an Arabic word for ‘equality’ – was launched in February 2009 at a large gathering in Kuala Lumpur, where it had been initiated by the pioneering Malaysian women’s group Sisters in Islam (SIS), itself active since 1988. We (I am a founding member) seek to link academic research with activism in order to present fresh perspectives on Islamic teachings and to contribute constructively to the reform of family laws and practices. But fi rst, a word on my own position and where I am coming from. I am a Muslim woman and a committed participant in the debates over – and the struggle for – gender equality in law. My approach and analysis are those of a trained legal anthropologist; but I do not claim to be a detached observer. Since the early 1980s my research has centred on the laws regulating gender relations in the Islamic legal tradition. I examine these laws from a critical feminist perspective and attempt a kind of ‘ethnography’ of the juristic constructs on which the whole edifi ce of gender inequality in the Islamic legal tradition is built. In 2000, I crossed the line between academic research and activism and began working with women’s groups such as Sisters in Islam. The Rise of Islamic Feminism In my own life experience, I see two major turning points. The fi rst was the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 and the foundation of the Islamic Republic. I think this was also a turning point in the history of Islam and of Muslim women’s place in the Western imaginary. Until then, the standard expectation among the general public, among intellectuals on the left and right, among feminists, and in academia, was that religions – including Islam – would gradually retreat and that political modernisation would do away with religious manifestations and symbols in the public space. Muslim women were still an exotic curiosity, expected to follow the path of progress and to liberate themselves from the constraints of their religion. In the 1970s, hijab – the most potent and loaded of Islamic symbols – was almost non-existent in public spaces; it was indeed rare to see a woman wearing hijab, whether in Europe or in public spaces, such as universities, offi ces and so on, in most Muslim-majority countries. | 109 | ESEJ / ESSAY All that changed with the resurgence of Islam as a political and spiritual force, which peaked in the Iranian Revolution. Though the forces that brought about the revolution were multiple, in the aftermath Islamists took power, and it has become known as the ‘Islamic revolution’. It gave hope and confi dence to the Muslim masses and a sense of pride that they badly needed; they needed to know that they could change a corrupt and unjust regime even though it was supported by Western powers. This was no small realisation. It was also a revolution that unfolded before the eyes of the world’s media, and one of its enduring and puzzling images was that of women in black hijab leading political demonstrations. It is no exaggeration to say that the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9 had as great an impact as the Russian Revolution of 1917 – at least in terms of its ideology. Meanwhile, in the intellectual fi eld, the dominant Western narrative and representation of Islam was unravelling. Edward Said’s Orientalism, fi rst published in 1978, had an impact on Western academia almost as signifi cant as that of the Iranian Revolution on the Muslim world. Said condemned the academic fi eld of Oriental Studies for lacking the objectivity that it claimed, and he argued that representations of the East had served to justify Europe’s colonial rule and defi ne the West’s self- image. One of Said’s arguments that is relevant to our discussion can be summarised as follows: the construction of identity in every age and every society involves establishing opposites and ‘others’. Oriental Studies led the West to see Islamic culture as static in both time and place, as uniform, and as incapable of defi ning itself. This gave Europe a sense of its own cultural and intellectual superiority – seeing itself as a dynamic, innovative, expanding culture, as well as being ‘the spectator, the judge and jury, of every facet of Oriental behavior’ (Said 1978: 109). Edward Said’s book was part of the emerging post-modern and post-colonial turn that brought a new level of complexity to both public and academic discourses on Islam and the Muslim world. Scholars were now trained to recognise and examine the power of representation, the power to name and defi ne the other, the intimate connections between knowledge and power. This was the context in which the meaning and symbolism of hijab came to the fore and was contested. One of the cultural manifestations of political Islam was that women, initially on a small scale, took hijab voluntarily. In a few countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Sudan, Islamists in power passed laws to make hijab mandatory: women were forbidden to appear in public without their hair and body fully covered. But elsewhere, in Muslim countries and others, increasing numbers of Muslim women were opting for hijab – for a variety of reasons and in a wide variety of shapes and colours: from the all-enveloping burqa of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the simple head-scarf of the Turkish peasant; and from the all-black niqab of Arabia to the rainbow-coloured manteau of the fashion-conscious Iranian middle class. | 110 | Ročník 20 • číslo 2 / 2019 This decision was offensive or incomprehensible to many Western feminists, for whom ‘veiling’ had been the most potent symbol of Islam’s subjugation of women. Why should women opt for such a manifest tool of their oppression? These feminists construed this decision by Muslim women as a rejection of a ‘Western’ and ‘modern’ way of life and values, which it was indeed for some, though many others thought they were fi nding fulfi lment and defi ning their identity in their own way. All of a sudden there was an angry debate. Hijab represented so many contradictory ideas about the state, the role of women, control over the body, sexual mores, and codes of morality and value. In that polarised debate, to be a feminist meant to oppose hijab and all it stood for, including ‘Islam’. To choose hijab meant one had been duped by religion, by political Islam, and therefore one could not possibly be a feminist.2 What was lost in this debate was that political Islam, like other ideologies, carried its own seeds of change. One of its neglected and paradoxical results was that it helped to create a space, an arena, within which Muslim women could reconcile their faith and identity with a ‘feminist’ struggle for gender equality. Let me elaborate: It is important to recall how and why Muslim women faced a diffi cult choice early on when feminism – as consciousness and a movement and a knowledge project – was entangled with the politics of colonialism.
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